A letter from the earth

“From the debris of desire rises an empire,
Where flickers become the flames of fire.
Let that fire burn within,
For the stars afar, shine so dim…”

The smouldering campfire snuffed out, leaving behind a thin ribbon of smoke that curled into the waking sky. Somewhere a little ahead, waves kept throwing themselves against the shore, tireless and pointless. The sound reached me before the light did. Then cold followed. An icy breeze slid over my skin and pulled me fully awake. I lay still for a moment, blinking at the horizon as it came alive, separating the land from the sky. And with that broke the first light over the edge of the world.
Gold and crimson spilt across the water, catching on the sand, the surf, the meadow… and my face. They too ignited the birds into a chorus of melodies. I pushed myself out of the tent and sank onto the cold sand, letting the warmth find me slowly. The sun climbed up, brushing colours into the dark canvas, bleeding blue hues into softer shades. Colour streaks thinned into sharper light. Pinks and oranges gave way to a pale, blinding white that stung my eyes. Still, I did not blink. It felt like if I did, I would lose something I had almost reached.
Home.
For one brief, reckless second, it felt home. Not a home I had lost. But a home I had somehow never known and still missed. I did not breathe. I did not move. I did not want the world to notice me noticing it. I wished the time would halt. My soulful eyes could not resist, and they welled with tears at that dulcet moment. Please, I thought. Let this be real. Let this not be a dream.
Then a mist rose from the meadow behind me, soft at first, then thick enough to swallow shapes and the distance. The world blurred, as if someone smudged it with careless fingers, sharpening the ambient noises. My ears caught a strange sound: low, heavy, unbothered. A deep, guttural snore. In the grass, behind the tent, something large was sleeping.
Then the sky tore.
Not cracked. Not split. Tore. A blast of light split the dawn in half and swallowed the sun for an instant. Every bird in sight shot upward at once. The air punched me in the chest. Sand hit my mouth. My tent ripped free and vanished like it had somewhere better to be.
I pushed up, coughing. That was when I saw a woman, half-buried in the sand, face turned away, still snoring. Of course she was.
“Wake up!” I said, already grabbing her shoulder. “This is not the part where you nap.”
She mumbled something about a party. Before I could understand, the ocean rose, and something rose from its depths.  My throat closed.
“Okay!”, I muttered, stepping back, “that’s absolutely not normal.”
The water broke open. Something vast moved inside it. Wrong in ways I did not have words for. Too many shapes trying to agree on one body, and for one ridiculous instant, it looked like a squid with elephant ears.
“Wake up!” I shook her harder, “There’s - there’s - something - COMING!”
She rolled over, eyes still shut, and muttered, “Too late. The party was last night.”
I stared at her.
Then at the ocean.
Then back at her.
I grabbed her arm and yelled, “We need to move. NOW!”
She opened one eye and gave me a sleepy, offended frown, as if I were interrupting an important nap.
I yelled at her, “YOU PRETTY FOOL!” and did the only sensible thing available to me.
I ran.
My legs were stiff, and the sand fought me at every step. I stumbled, twisted my ankle, and went down hard. A cry cut through the air behind me. I turned and saw black arrow-like shapes cut through the mist, fast and sharp, racing toward me. I tried to crawl.
The first arrow missed my face by the thickness of a ribbon.
But the second one did not.
Then my eyes snapped open, and the nightmare ended.
I woke up gasping. My pulse hammered in my throat, loud enough to drown everything else. For a second, I could not tell if I was still there. The fear still lingered. Not the fear of what had happened, but the fear of what was about to. The same kind, the moment after proximity sirens begin to wail. I dragged a hand across my face, wiping the sweat from my eyes, and reached blindly for the pouch strapped to my arm. I took a long sip from it before looking around. The water tasted warm, metallic.
Then the noise came back. Low hum of systems. Distant chatter. A soft, irritating drip near my elbow. Reality settled in like an unwelcome guest. On the screen above me, the time glowed in pale blue.
2:17 p.m.
I was at my workstation.
Drooling.
I wiped my mouth, straightened, and immediately regretted both decisions when I saw him behind the glass partition. Through the window, I saw my supervisor’s big, curved nose pointing at me. His brows were drawn down into a permanent scowl. He looked as if the universe had personally offended him. So, it was doubtful if my dozing had painted him red. And then, he pointed at me.
All doubts jumped out of the window.
A few of my co-workers snickered behind me as I got to my feet and kept walking.
Chin up. Dignity intact. Mostly.
“Sir”, I started before I even reached the door, “I can explain.”
“You were sleeping! Again!”
“Temporarily unconscious”, I corrected, stepping inside. “There’s a difference. One is negligence, the other is… biological rebellion.”
His expression did not change.
I straightened my back and added, “I had never caught a wink at work. You can check my record. Something must’ve been wrong with the food. Or the air. Or gravity. Honestly, gravity has been acting all week suspiciously.”
Behind me, someone snorted.
I turned toward the glass. “GROW UP, GUYS!”
A few heads ducked. One did not.
I turned back, instantly polite again. “Sir, respectfully, this is clearly a conspiracy.”
“Tell me”, he continued, voice flattening, “Was it this… ‘conspiracy’ that caused that mining mission to go wrong?”
The room shifted. Not physically. But something inside me jolted. For a second, the room vanished; white glare. cracking ice. a tether snapping tight.
I blinked, and the office snapped back into place.
“Wow,” I said. “We’re still on that?”
“You were on shift.”
“That wasn’t…” I stopped, swallowed, tried again. “That wasn’t my fault. Something hit us. You can check the log.”
“I never liked you, kid. If it were in my hand, you would have been long gone. You are a disappointment.”
“Wow! Like that was a secret,” I murmured.
He looked at me a moment longer, then said, “Report to the Commander immediately.”
“Commander Hamilton? Why?” My stomach dropped, “I thought, no one wants to waste a hibernation pod on me. What’s it for then?”
Taking a sip from his juice box, he said, “He asked for you. Personally. I think he found a way to get rid of the likes of you.”
I gave a nervous laugh and saluted too quickly. “Of course. Thank you for your unmatched kindness, sir.”
As I stepped out, a voice from behind me muttered, “Speaking of kindness, you might want to change that see-through sweat-soaked pungent shirt.”
My pupils dilated as I looked down.
The sweat-soaked fabric clung to me with insulting honesty.
I groaned. “Not again.”
Forcing a smile, I cut and ran to get my jacket, left on the chair.
“NICE SHIRT!”
“Thanks.” I yelped, “But I’m sorry, it’s too expensive for you even to lend!”
While walking down to the commander’s cabin, a question constantly lingered: “What might be the commander’s urgency with me?” In just a few seconds, my black-and-white thoughts were replaced by a bunch of colourful ones, and then I heard an announcement.
“ATTENTION!  Citizens of Himalaya! As per the prior notice, gravity will be off for 30 minutes for accelerator maintenance. Please secure sharp items, liquids, and other potentially life-threatening objects. Fasten your seatbelt and use the nearest available seat to avoid accidents. In case of emergency, push the button on your wristband, state your emergency and wait for assistance.”
The announcement repeated, and then the countdown began, “120… 121… 122…”
While everyone around me hurried to strap in, I kept walking. By the time gravity faded, my feet had already left the floor. My long, chocolate-cherry hair slowly raised and became a bush around my head as if I had touched static electricity. We often called these “moon-faces”, but it was more like a bloomy red rose for me. Moments like this apparently made us feel like we are living in space, far from home; however, not all of us are fond of these moments. With a gentle push against the wall, I drifted towards the window to see the spacewalkers.
Outside, the stars held still.
That was always the strangest part. When the ship rotated, the sky felt alive, as if the universe were turning with us. But during gravity maintenance, the outside became static and silent, a vast stillness full of distance.
A bright yellow dot, smaller than my fingertip, stood out against the pitch-black background. That was the Sun. I looked for a blue dot among all the stars, but we had come too far for my naked eyes to spot our last home, the Earth. I saw a pair of vessels floating alongside ours, silver and silent, companions on the same long exodus.
Sometimes I wondered, after what we did to the earth, if we would ever be able to breathe fresh air! Gold and diamonds had lost their charm for us; instead, we truly wished for the touch of raindrops and the whisperings of the wind. The tallness of a tree, the thickness of a forest, the greatness of a mountain, the vast blue sky, the mighty oceans, the kind rivers, and the cruel deserts had become the fragments of our dreams. A year still had 365 days and a day 24 hours, but what we truly longed for were the seasons and day-night cycles. High-definition holographs allowed us to experience many things, but it was like a juicy, sweet treat in a transparent wrapper; it heightened the hunger for more.
Then one of the spacewalkers pulled my attention by flashing a torch at me. When I looked at her, she tapped on her wrist. It was almost half an hour, so I pushed myself against the window and reached the other part of the corridor to save myself from the heartless gravity.
After the countdown hit zero, the accelerator roared back to life. The floor slammed into my feet with a rude kind of certainty. My knees dipped, catching the impact a second too late. I exhaled, steadying myself.
The corridor stretched ahead, humming with routine indifference, as if nothing in the universe had just paused and resumed. I quickened my pace. The guard was already waiting.
“You’re late. Commander was expectin’ ya’ sooner,” said the guard outside the commander’s office in an accent that made every word he uttered charged with import and authority.
I opened my mouth to defend myself, then closed it. No point arguing with a wall that could arrest me.
“In ya’ go,” he added, nodding toward the door. “Shoes off, lassie. He’ll see ya’ shortly.”
My brows pinched together, but I slipped my shoes onto the rack anyway. No point arguing with rituals I did not understand.
The room brightened up at the touch of my bare feet with the grassland look-alike carpet. At odds with my expectations, the room was small, even with five walls, all tilted at uneasy angles. My eyes lifted.
Faces.
They were everywhere. Three on each wall, arranged with a precision that felt almost ceremonial. Except one wall, where a single portrait hung alone, claiming its space without apology. It was a portrait of a blue-eyed old man with a gold cross on his chest. They were commanders. All thirteen of them. Eyes sharp. Expressions carved somewhere between pride and warning. They did not look at me. They looked through me. I resisted the urge to straighten my posture.
The table stood against the single portrait wall, bolted down like it might try to escape otherwise. One chair behind it. None in front.
Right. Hospitality died with Earth.
To the left, a hologram unit sat half-dismantled, wires spilling out like it had been interrupted mid-surgery. On the far right, a couch sagged under the weight of its own survival. Its fabric was stitched and re-stitched, springs poking out like meerkats out of their holes. When I turned to the table, my jaw dropped to the floor.
There, resting in the centre, was an object that no longer belonged in this universe.
Paper.
Not synthetic. Not replicated.
Paper.
Papers had long been banned even before we left the Earth. The only pieces of paper we had then were from old books and paintings stored in the Alexandrian, the ship dedicated to human history.
My feet moved before my mind caught up. Each step slower than the last.
That paper had the colour of a tied Sun or wet dunes. The edges were burned, curled inward, as if they had survived fire and refused to forget it. The surface was not smooth. It rose and dipped under my fingers like a landscape.
“Where in the middle of nowhere did you come from…” I whispered.
Then I saw it.
My name.
Written.
Not printed. Not projected.
Written.
Each stroke uneven, deliberate, alive.

“Dear Asmita,”

The air in the room thinned. Something inside my chest shifted. Not fear. Not yet.
Recognition.
The kind of feeling you feel when a stranger says your name.

“If you’re reading this, then I believe the flicker has become a flame.
Your dream of that cold, shivering morning was neither a coincidence nor a suppressed desire…”

The words pulled at something buried.
The red sun. The impossible creature. The scream that still echoed somewhere behind my ribs. The avalanche of imagery blurred my vision.
The door slammed open.
I jerked back.
The same blue eyes from the portrait on the wall stared at me from the threshold. They scanned the room, quick, calculating, like he expected something to be out of place. Then they landed on the paper. Then back on me. It was Commander Felix Hamilton, standing.  For a man who usually moved like gravity obeyed him, that stillness felt louder than any shout. With five silver stars on the left chest and a gold cross on the right, his dark blue bio-suit radiated authority.
I straightened instinctively, heat rushing up my neck. “Sorry, sir. I was just—”
He stepped closer. Slow. Measuring.
“Oh! You’re A—A—Asmita!” He replied with a vacant face, and after a brief pause, he continued, “And you found the letter! Good. Good.”
“I was just looking around.”
“So!” he asked.
“Your room is beautiful, well decorated, and the five walls are well utilised with all the commanders.”
“Thank you. But I was asking about the letter. So, what do you think?”
“I’ve not read it yet, sir. I …” I responded.
“What! What are you doing here then! Waste of time.”
The heat on my neck spread to my face. For a moment, I was not sure whether to feel insulted or dismissed.
Then the commander raised his wrist. A holographic interface bloomed into existence, its light flickering across his face as data scrolled past his eyes.
My data.
He began walking, circling the table as he read.
“Mother deceased at birth. Father lost to radiation exposure a few years ago.” His voice was flat, clinical. “Academic performance… mediocre. Occupational efficiency… below the acceptable range. Three demotions in two years. The sole survivor of a mining expedition went wrong. How are you not in a pod!”
“I guess! I’m more than meets the eye!” I said, forcing a thin smile.
His gaze did not leave my face, as if he were searching for something beneath the skin.
A lie. A crack. Anything.
Then, out of nowhere, words slipped out before I could stop them.
“I didn’t do anything, sir.”
My voice sounded smaller than I intended.
“I was asleep when we were hit at the mining site. It wasn’t even my shift. I didn’t break any rule.” My fingers curled tighter against the edge of the table. “Please… don’t put me in a pod.”
What followed was silence. Not the comfortable kind. The kind that makes you hear your own pulse. For a second, I thought I had crossed a line I could not uncross.
He did not respond immediately. He just… looked at me. Not confused. Not angry.
Measuring.
“Interesting!” he said.
He stepped around the table, closer now, and tapped on the letter lightly.
“Go on,” he said.
His voice had changed. Softer. Controlled.
“Finish what you started.”

“… It was a fragment of disoriented reality, yet to happen. Your mind just picked up distorted signals and simplified them to images your cognition could comprehend.
The red sun, the giant squid with elephant ears, the girl and the black gooey arrows weren’t innovations of your insanity. They’re interpretations.”

My hand tightened around the edge of the table. The words blurred. Not because I could not read them. Because I remembered them.

“The universe, as we see it, is beyond our comprehension. We lack the complexity to grasp its intricacies; limited by the evolutionary intellect governor. The laws of nature, we discovered, degrade outside our local frame. In a way, the universe is hostile without intention. There are regions where light-years shrink to inches, where effects need no cause, where time loops in circles, where we exist at the base of the evolutionary tree, far from its pinnacle, and where mere observation alters reality. Just as your dream did. I crossed many of those regions.
And I didn’t return unchanged. What I brought back isn’t knowledge, but perspectives. And a perspective like this can sometimes be indistinguishable from insanity.”

A pause in the ink.

“You can’t outrun what’s coming. Measuring a storm with a ruler is futile. Your dream wasn’t a warning; it was one of the many exposures. The future is inevitable unless they keep their promise and intervene in time. Irrespective of that, you need to come to me. I need to pass on this skill.”

The silence between the lines felt deliberate.
Heavy.

“What I know doesn’t survive translation. It must be shown, experienced, and endured. Then, you’ll understand what must be done to save them. All of them.
You do not have the luxury of disbelief. You do not have the protection of ignorance. And, most importantly, you do not have the luxury of time, unlike me.”

My throat tightened. The words felt less like a request and more like gravity.

“Come, see me. You know where.
Bring him to me, you know what.

—Capt. Reehan Ramayaa”

Silence settled, thick and watchful. I stared at the name. Once a chapter in a textbook. A cautionary tale. A legend people quoted when they wanted to sound intelligent was writing to me! A prodigy turned prune.
A soft laughter escaped.
“Of course,” I muttered. “Why not? Dead heroes write letters now. Makes perfect sense.”
“Dead! He isn’t dead.”
“NOT DEAD! How do you know that!”
Tapping on the letter, Commander said, “He has signed it.”
I shot back. “I think it’s a cosmic prank with excellent timing.”
For a breath, neither of us spoke.
Then the questions burst out of me in a rush. “If it is really him, why didn’t he send a proper message? Why a letter? Why not a recording? Why not a location? And how in the middle of the universe did he send paper of all things? We do not have space-mailmen, sir. We do not even have teleportation. Why send it to me? I am nobody special if you separate me from my sense of humour.”
Commander sat in his chair and replied, “I’m not worried about why you. People do have their own unique ways of surprising us in desperate times. The real question is what dream is he talking about? And why now!”
“I don’t know, sir,” I replied without a blink.
Stroking his chin, he looked up straight into my eyes for a moment and then tilted his head sideways.
“Yeah! How would you know! The man had gone insane upon return. If only his mother had lived… What a lady she was!”
“Is it true, sir? He returned in just thirty-seven years without spending half of his fuel or any of his clones?”
“We have had our fair share of doubts. But evidently, yes. His ship recorded a travel distance of about 5 million light-years, twice the distance between the Milky Way and Andromeda.”
“Why did he change his ship’s course from the nearest star, Proxima Centauri, to the nearest galaxy?”
“Nothing made sense! The latter part of his life is a complete mystery,” the Commander replied.
I let out a thin, sharp laugh, because the alternative was to sit there and let disbelief crush me. “So, he vanished into the dark, came back with a miracle, and decided to write poetry to me after decades.”
“When he returned, we were so happy and surprised too. He was returning after five years of radio silence. I was in the first medical responding team when, and I remember him ranting just about one thing—they’ll come.”
“Who will come… E.T., Jadoo, the empire, Na’vi … WHO?? The GOD!” I mocked.
“I wish he had not crashed that ship into the Earth.”
“Why did he crash? Didn’t anyone try to rescue him?”
“Commencing a rescue mission means wasting resources and time on a lost cause. He was not important; the information and the ship were. But both of them were in pieces.”
“It has been forty years since then, and we have travelled far.”
“No, not far enough. By this time, he would have already returned from Andromeda if we had his tech and see, we have only covered point four per cent of our total journey. We need that information. Now more than ever.”
“I think we should send someone to get that piece of intel before he dies,” I suggested.
A smile came to his face, and he replied, “You think so too? Imagine if he tells the complete truth, how many lives we’ll be able to save. We can travel to our destination within months. No one else has to die of hunger or radiation.”
I replied, “I just have one problem with this plan: how is he surviving on that lonely, radiation-filled planet. And even if he is alive now, how can we be sure that he won’t die tomorrow? I mean, he must be a hundred and two! Right?”
“The only way to know what is in our reach and what is beyond is to take a step towards the unreachable.” Said the commander, walked up to me and continued.
“You aren’t suggesting…” pupils dilated as I asked.
“It would be an adventure. With my fastest ship, you can reach him in less than five years.”
“WHAT! YOU WANT ME TO LEAVE NOW!”
“I can make all the arrangements; you just need to nod.”
My legs could not withstand the weight of the situation, and I had tightened my hand around the edges of the table. The word adventure rang in my ears like a siren. The mining accident flashed before my eyes. I barely survived because I was sleeping in my cryo-pod. Otherwise, the empty darkness would have claimed me too.
With a shaky voice and lost eyes, I asked, “Why me!”
“Perhaps, you’re more than meets the eye.”
I was about to follow up with another stupid question when the broken hologram projector beeped twice and popped up a pale, white, sweat-soaked face. It was our surveillance chief.
The hologram fizzled out. Then came back again.
His voice tremored, “We---we lost contact with three mo---more pioneers and… Sir, we can’t hide it anymore---we. They are…”
“Hold on, chief,” said the Commander, who then looked at me and continued, “Think about it, kid and give me an answer by the end of this week.”
Waving the letter towards me, he pointed toward the door. “Go. Dismissed.”
I left with the letter still sliding into my inner jacket pocket.
I was so lost in my own thoughts that I could not process the information I just received about our pioneer ships. I did not even realise that I was walking barefoot until the guard shouted from behind. The dilemma of whether to stay in my ship’s comfort or leave for a bizarre planet was eating up all my energy. No one in all the thirteen ships had the experience of living on a planet. Worst of the worst, I never enrolled myself in simulation training either. All these thoughts made me ravenous. By the time I reached the canteen, my stomach had started its own rebellion.
There was a birthday celebration happening for one of my colleagues, but luckily, I was not invited. So, I found a peaceful spot at the counter and requested Nikita, who was on duty, to bring me a mango juice box and some chicken-flavoured protein paste.
She raised a speculative eyebrow and asked, “I heard the commander called for you.”
“How does everyone know everything about me? Am I that famous?”
“Is everything alright? Are they putting you to sleep for dozing, or is it about the mining?”
I responded with a mouthful of food, “No, of course not. This job is making me super hungry. I guess I should apply for a transfer to maintain my figure. Otherwise, I’m gonna end up like dinosaurs, huge but extinct.”
Her lips curved into a playful grin, eyes gleaming. “You? No way. You’re in excellent shape. Long chocolate-cherry hair, deep brown eyes,” leaning over the counter and tilting her head to size me up, she continued, “I bet, with that tall and lean body, you tower over hearts. Just curious, how tall are you?”
I nearly choked on my drink. “That is a terrifyingly poetic thing to say before lunch.”
Her grin widened. “How tall are you, really?”
I gave a small, reluctant smile. “Six feet six, apparently.”
She gave a low whistle. “That explains the trouble.”
“What trouble?”
“The kind you leave behind.”
I looked behind and saw someone from the birthday table approaching with a slice of cake and an expectant smile.
“Hey,” he said. “Come join us. It is my birthday.”
I glanced at the cake, then at him, then at the cluster of watching faces around the table. “Oh. I did not see you all there. Very stealthy. Hiding behind dessert. A bold tactic.”
A few people laughed.
I lifted my hands in mock solemnity. “Happy birthday. Truly. Here is to getting older, gradually becoming more unbearable, and eventually achieving a peaceful and dignified death.”
The smile on the boy’s face fell in slow motion, as though someone had dimmed the lights behind his eyes.
Nikita covered her mouth, but not quickly enough to hide her horror.
I winced. “That sounded better in my head.”
The boy turned away without a word and walked back to his friends. The air around the table changed at once. Conversation thinned. A few people looked in my direction with the quiet pity reserved for disasters that can still talk.
Nikita pointed at me with a spoon and said, “With a mouth like that, it’s a miracle you’re not exiled yet.”
“I was being sincere.”
“You were being catastrophic.”
I sighed and looked down into my cup. “I don’t understand people sometimes.”
“That much is obvious.”
I left the canteen soon after, my appetite gone, my thoughts noisier than before. My fingers found the letter in my pocket without looking. I pressed my hand over it, as if it might try to escape. The paper should have felt light. Fragile. Forgettable. But it did not. The ink felt heavier than paper, and words felt denser than the letters. I held it tighter without realising. It was more than just a letter. It was a summons.
I was slowly sucked back into my thoughts. “How did he know about my dream? Yes, our privacy is compromised, but at least our dreams and thoughts were ours to explore. There is nothing scarier than someone knowing what we are thinking.”
With those thoughts wobbling around my head, I reached my hut.
The hut number 607.
Besides a sleeping pouch and a cupboard, there was hardly room for a third person. It had solid walls and was built independently of the ship, so that in an emergency, it would be an easy escape. In short, our huts were lifeboats. While slipping into my sleep-shirt, a wave of questions came into my mind, “Why would I go to such a place where our thoughts are not even private? Why would I risk my life? I mean, at least in a hibernation pod, I’ll have a chance to wake up someday rather than never on a radiation-filled planet. There is no point in going. I shall pass up the request.”
And somewhere among those thoughts, I reached the land of dreams again.
“Dham! Dham!”
“ASMITA…ASMITA! … WAKE UP!”
I opened the door while wiping my drool-dripping mouth. Nikita was at my door, with chaos in her background.
She shouted, “DO YOU KNOW WHAT HAPPENED?”
“Yeah! Precisely. I was about to… wait! WHAT! You can see my dream too!” I replied while rubbing my eyes.
She gave me a look sharp enough to cut metal and said, “NO, silly. I think we made our first contact.”
The fog in my brain cleared all at once, and I replied with a giggle, “The first contact! With whom? “ALIENS!”
She seized my hand and dragged me into the corridor, where people were gathering at windows, craning their necks, speaking in frightened bursts. “Look,” she said, pointing.
I squinted through the crowd. At first, there was nothing but darkness between the glass and the distant scattered stars.
“Did you see?”
“You woke me up with a bang, dragged me out of my bed to show me pitch black and stars! How romantic!” I said, showing the bionic tracker tied on my wrist, and I shouted, “BUT, IT’S TWO O’CLOCK IN THE MORNING!”
She borrowed a telescope from a nearby stranger, shoved that in my hand and asked me to focus on the far-right at the corner of the window.
I replied, “CLASSIC! A ship, a spyglass, paranoid sailors… I’m only an eye-patch short of becoming a pirate. Aye, matey?”
She gave a look.
“GEE! Did you forget your morning pills? That’s a joke. Chill.”
I adjusted the lens, trying to steady my breathing. At first, all I saw was black. Then, slowly, the shapes emerged.
Small. T-shaped.
Dozens of them.
Maybe more.
A man beside me whispered, “They were eighty light-years away a few months ago.”
I looked at him.
“Now they are only at six.”
The blood in my body seemed to cool.
He swallowed hard. “They’ve slowed, but they’re still closing in. At this rate, they’ll reach us in five years.”
The Surveillance chief’s words suddenly rang in my ears— “They’re coming.”
Then the ship speaker crackled.
“Asmita, cabin number 607, please report to Commander in the assembly hall immediately.”
Nikita asked, “It’s twice in twelve hours.”
I said, too quickly. “I mean, I dreamed something. I don’t know. Everything is happening too fast.”
She said, “You go now and tell me everything when you return.”
The stranger coughed and said, “You can’t go there in your underwear. You should put on a pair of pants first.”
I looked down.
For one humiliating instant, I simply stood there and absorbed the disaster. Then I fled back into my hut and nearly collided with the cupboard while trying to dress myself.
By the time I reached the assembly hall, the place was already buckling under panic.
The Commander’s guard at the entrance fixed me with his sharp, official stare. “Where have you been, lassie? We have been trying to reach your cabin.”
His gaze dropped. “And what, exactly, are you wearing?”
“I am having a very bad day,” I muttered, then hurried inside before he could respond.
At the centre of the hall stood Commander Hamilton, surrounded by a dozen hovering holographic heads, each one wearing a different expression of alarm, suspicion, or open hostility. Their voices overlapped in a storm of arguments. I had seen men panic before, but this was a different kind of fear. This was leadership under pressure, which somehow always looked messier than chaos in the streets.
The commander spotted me, waved me to come forward, “There she is. Asmita is the solution.”
A commander with a silver-rimmed face near the front frowned. “The girl in the sleeping clothes is meant to save us?”
Hamilton snapped back, “Since when do we judge capability by clothing? We should thank Ms Asmita for coming to the assembly at this hour on short notice.”
Another voice cut in. Commander Diana Darwin, stationed on the Noah, her tone hard enough to sand glass. “What guarantee do we have that this will help?”
Commander Hamilton did not hesitate and asked, “What guarantee do we have of survival if we ignore it?”
The room fell briefly silent.
Commander Hamilton responded immediately, “Capt. Ramayaa warned us. Instead of listening to him, you know what we did to him. We were too proud to understand his gibberish then, and we would be foolish if we don’t comply now. Do we want to be known as proud fools who got extinct?”
He turned to the others. “We are not discussing comfort anymore. Comfort is gone. We are discussing survival. Once divided by the ideas of communism, capitalism, religion, nationality, and boundaries, humankind is united by a single goal —SURVIVAL. Our species is down to what we can carry, what we can protect, and what we are willing to become. Based on our needs, we are not very different from cave dwellers, as air, water, and food have become basic necessities rather than comfort, luxury, and status. We are prepared for this journey, but not for them. We need his help more than ever.”
Commander Zhao asked, “Besides all the things, it’s quite difficult to digest that he happens to send you a letter that just appears on your desk.”
Commander Hamilton replied, “The content of the letter is more important than the mechanism of arrival.”
Clearing his throat, Commander Zhao said, “Will we be able to get that information in time? They are closing. And they will reach us in less than five years. How do you think that information will be helpful to us?”
Commander Hamilton replied, “I am not saying we should not prepare for the worst, but in the meantime, we should not give up on hope either.”
“And how do you suggest we should prepare? “We are cargo ships, not warships. We have discipline, yes. Weapons, no. Defensive shielding, barely. If they reach us, we are sitting targets,” said Commander Nimba.
The room erupted again. Voices rose. Holograms flickered. One commander suggested weaponising the fusion reactors. Another proposed defensive shielding. Someone else insisted on a retreat. Someone else said retreat was cowardice dressed as caution. The arguments rolled over one another until they began to feel less like strategy and more like panic in formal clothing.
I stood in the centre of it, increasingly aware that no one had actually asked whether I wanted any part of this.
Eventually, Hamilton raised his voice above the rest. “We are the last of our race. Twenty-one thousand active. Two million in hibernation. We do not have the luxury of perfect choices anymore. Our ancestors tortured earth for thousands of years. Unplanned, unethical actions, filled with greed, robbed us of our home planet and made us leave. Now, we have a plan. All the calculations, decades of resource gatherings, years of research, and days of discussion finally paved the path for us to a new home. Now changing it would again set us on a path of self-destruction. Besides, if they can travel intergalactic distances within a few years, don’t you think they can outrun us whether or not we change our due course? I suggest we maintain our course until we find more information to act upon.”
Then he looked directly at me.
“Go to him,” he said. “Get the truth. Make him speak.”
These exchanges of words exploded a cluster bomb in my brain. They turned it into a mental soup of conflicting instructions. I went there to say no, but now it seemed like I never had a chance to consent. I felt like a chosen one, a hero…a bloody saviour. But deep down, I knew I was nothing of that sort.
After an hour-long agreement and disagreement, the floating holographic heads disappeared, leaving every pair of eyes glued on the commander in that hall and me.
The commander shouted, “Go back to business. Put every AI to work and find me all possible outcomes before the next assembly. And prepare to disengage level one hibernation pods if we need more manpower.”
I asked, “Isn’t there any possibility that the aliens might be friendly?”
“All the odds are against it,” Commander replied while circling me.
I suggested, “We should try contacting them.”
“Do you think we are not trying? But they are sending our signals back to us. We don’t know what they mean by that and what they want.” With words, he also stopped.
Then his guard came to him seeking a whispering ear.
As soon as the information is passed, the commander said, “Follow me, Asmita. An adventure awaits you.”
Again, the word ‘adventure’. My heart was beating so fast I could feel my veins in my trembling hands. In that moment of fuzziness, I followed the steps before me like a tail follows a body.
“An adventure, do I even know what it means! Except for book reading, what other adventures did I have? Perhaps it is the daily errand I run, or it might be when I had to look for those missing undies. Perhaps I will never know if I will stay enclosed in this vessel. I need to wander off. Maybe then, I would learn what an adventure means. Maybe, then, I finally know what it means to live life.”
People were still there, unaware of what was coming and hoping for the best. Suddenly, I felt more nervous when I realised their future lies with me. My shoulders felt heavy, and I could not even lift my legs.
Seeing the docking bay sign, I asked in a trembling voice, “Sir, my security clearance has been revoked for the docking bay after the mining accident. I will be arrested if I enter.”
“Don’t forget who you are with. Besides, all your things have been boarded in the ship. You must leave now.”
“NOW!”
“Yes, now.”
The moment I heard that, my feet betrayed me.
I stopped.
Just… stopped.
The corridor stretched ahead, long and sterile, but something in those words hooked into my spine and pulled me backwards. Slowly, I turned. My gaze slid over my shoulder, hesitant at first, like I half-expected the walls themselves to answer me.
They didn’t.
So I ran.
Not graceful. Not planned. Just pure instinct, limbs flailing into motion before my brain could catch up. The floor thudded under my feet, breath tearing in and out of my chest as if it wanted nothing to do with me anymore.
“Hey!”
Too late.
The guard came after me with the efficiency of someone who had done this before. Heavy boots. Precise steps. No wasted motion. I barely made it past the second turn before his hand clamped around my arm and yanked me back like I weighed nothing.
“Let go!” I snapped, twisting, trying to wrench free.
He did not even flinch.
So, I escalated.
Every curse I knew, every half-baked threat, every dramatic accusation I could stitch together in the moment came pouring out. Violations of freedom. Abuse of authority. Crimes against humanity, dignity, and possibly fashion. I threw them all at him, one after another, hoping at least one would land hard enough to matter.
They did not.
My voice echoed down the corridor, loud, messy, desperate.
Out of all the crowded corridors and whispering corners, it just happened to be very, very empty.
They injected me with something and made me sit in a chair. My whole body went cold.
“Why me?”
“Because he called for you. And maybe you can help them too.”
“Help who?”
“The people on earth.”
“THERE ARE PEOPLE ON EARTH!?”
“Yes, many were left on earth to face their fate, a grievous offence against morality, however, a necessary one. Not all could have been saved, but a few had to be boarded to save an entire species. Decisions of great consequence were made by a few and followed by the rest. But this time, we can correct our ancestors’ mistakes. This time, we can really make a difference by saving them.”
“It’s not my mistake. I was not even in existence then. The sinners are sleeping in hibernation pods. Wake them up and send them back. I intend to stay here. IT’S MY HOME.” I spoke in a single breath.
No one listened to me.
Behind me, a crew moved with quiet urgency. They guided a trolley past me, slow and careful, as if escorting something sacred… or dangerous.
It was huge.
A shape buried under a heavy cloth, round enough to suggest a cannonball, uneven enough to feel like a piece of a broken world. The fabric clung to it in odd places, dipping and rising, hinting at edges that didn’t quite belong together. For a fleeting second, it looked absurd. Like a magician’s trick mid-performance. A ball hidden under a towel, waiting for applause.
But no one here was smiling.
Commander said, “Capt. Ramayaa did not return alone. You need to take this to him.”
The words reached me in fragments, each one slower than the last.
The injection started to kick in. The room drifted. The edges of the world softened. Voices became water. Light became distance.
My gaze tried to follow the trolley, but the shape under the cloth was already dissolving, sinking into the haze. Light pulled away from me. Sound folded in on itself.
Hands guided me. Or maybe I was already falling.
The last thing that stayed sharp… was his voice.
“Put her in the pod.”
When I opened my eyes again, I was inside the hibernation pod.
The chamber was too narrow, too close, too much like being sealed into a polished coffin. Panic rose before I could stop it. My breath hitched. The walls seemed to inch inward, one silent breath at a time.
I tried to speak, but my throat locked.
Then the pod vibrated. Engines ignited somewhere far beneath me. The ship shifted.
The nourishing fluid began to rise around my body, warm and strangely comforting, as if the machine had decided I was worth saving.
Outside the pod, the universe pulled away.
And before the dark closed over me, I saw bright gases engulfing our ships.